The attitudinal determinants of leadership
Prof David Venter Vlerick Business School
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The flat globalized world is a beast that few leaders, if any, know how to tame.
From Brussels through Hyderabad to Beijing and back to Los Angeles, the clock ticks remorselessly with challenges becoming ever greater and more daunting.
10 hours 25 minutes and 16 seconds.
Somewhere in the world, a number of ‘teenage entrepreneurs’, covered from head to toe in tattoos and piercings, are working quietly in a dingy garage at their own small revolution, which aspires to nothing less than radically disrupting the industry in which you work. Simultaneously, you are preparing your budget presentation, still not sure whether you have chosen to wear the right tie – for after all, today you are dealing with the ‘big guns’ from headquarters. Whereas you are normally confident and assertive, your staff barely recognizes you as the leader they know when the ‘top brass’ arrive. You work feverishly on the ‘content dimension’ of your speech, but even more so on the ‘persuasiveness’. Take heed of those teenage entrepreneurs, but also of the guys from HQ!
With the Arab spring spreading across one middle-eastern country after another, Belgian politicians, after setting an unenviable world record for the longest ever negotiations to form a new government, have cobbled together a coalition. In Vietnam, a young worker dreams of a life where she can afford a pair of the shoes she stiches every day for rich, fashion conscious kids in the West, whilst in Congo a young boy is beaten for complaining about the slave labour he is forced to perform in a deep underground cobalt mine to enable regularly upgrades to our mobile phones.
10 hours, 25 minutes and 17 seconds. Time is ticking. Never before in the history of mankind has a single second been so charged with drama. In this analytic number driven business world, the slightest bite of subjectively formulated information triggers a stock market plunge. We grab for twitter...
By the end of today, you will have processed more new information than medieval men or women were required to process in their lifetime. More new pages will be printed and more new products launched than in an entire year a few decades ago. Before you turn in tonight, tens of thousands of new film clips will have been posted on YouTube, and more than forty million will be viewed across the globe. In China, where more building cranes than in the rest of the
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world will be hard at work, in excess of two hundred million modern day slaves will eek out the few euros they need to allow them and their families to survive for yet another day.
In Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Syria protesters have finally been tested beyond their endurance, persuading the majority of their fellow-countrymen to join them in their desperate search for the leaders who will hopefully make a positive difference to their lives. Similarly, many workers in organizations also yearn for leaders who are able to enhance the quality of their lives. It comes as no surprise that at the foot of the Dark Continent, people are deeply disturbed at the news that Nelson Mandela, their iconic leader, is hospitalized with a collapsed lung. The positive difference he made still clearly imprinted in their consciousness.
Never before in the history of mankind has a single second had such an impact.
But, as a leader you can also make a positive difference... if you truly aspire to!
For which former ‘boss’ would you wish to work for again?
One day your curious grandchildren will undoubtedly ask: ‘Granddad, Grandma, who were the great leaders when you were young?’ Although history will probably confirm the names you mention, would you be equally able to predict the really important leaders of the future?
In all likelihood Obama may be one of those you mention.1After many years of struggle, he finally realized Martin Luther King’s dream.2 Whereas King gave hope to black Americans, Obama went a crucial step further: he offered hope to all Americans. Would it not be a great pleasure when talking to your grandchildren in years to come, to tell them that Obama’s famous ‘Yes we can’
became ‘Yes we did’!
Or maybe you’re a fan of the current Chinese president, Hu Jintao, a more conservative figure than Obama, with a ‘low-key, reserved leadership style’?3He presides over a nation that in recent years has experienced unparalleled economic growth. Should he be credited with this achievement? Only insiders will ever really know.
Will you talk about the Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Prize-winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the heroine of Myanmar, who on the very day after her release from years of house arrest, appealed for national unity, promising to continue her stubborn fight for the freedom of her people, regardless of the risks?4
Would it be women leaders capture your attention, their ‘female thinking’ bringing a pleasingly holistic tint to the qualities of top management?5 But perhaps commercial success stories impressed you even more: the radical innovation of Apple’s Steve Jobs, the foresight of Microsoft’s Bill Gates, the risk seeking of Virgin’s Richard Branson, or the environmental consciousness of Anita Roddick of The Body Shop fame?6
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Hayward. What will be remembered is that he resigned from BP (or was pushed) after the oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, just off the southern coastline of the United States.7 Was he, however, the person responsible for the explosion on the Deep-water Horizon drilling platform, and for the ensuing environmental disaster? Or was he as leader confronted by what Taleb refers to as a ‘Black Swan’?8
Seen in retrospect, perhaps even the name of Herman Van Rompuy may enter your list.9 His calm, resolute style of leadership offered the only alternative to
‘loose cannons’ such as Sarkozy and Berlusconi when it came to electing the first permanent president of the European Union.10
You will certainly not be telling your grandchildren about Saddam Hussein or Mummar Gaddafi ... although they may be very curious about what made them so bad!
Not without good reason Furnham posed the following question: ‘Of all the leaders you worked with, how many would you like to work with again in the future?’11 Based on research conducted by Hogan et al., the researchers concluded that approximately fifty percent of employees definitely did not want to work for their old managers again, and that a further twenty percent would be less than happy to work for them again.12 Seen from a different perspective, only about thirty percent of these leaders received thumbs up!
By now you are probably itching to ask: Why and how do some leaders make a difference, whilst others do not? These and other such questions clamour for answers. They are crucial questions that beg honest answers! This is increasingly evident given the numerous revolts against ‘established leaders’, particularly in the Middle East, the horrific consequences of the triple disaster in Japan, and the continuing economic crisis: crises that cry out for leadership way above the average. Take a moment and ponder where and when you last encountered positive leadership that goes way beyond the average?
‘Who aims at excellence will be above mediocrity, who aims at mediocrity will be far short of it.’Burmese saying
Do you and/or your organization collaborate with the competitive doom-mongering in today’s society, or do you celebrate what’s right in the world?
Notwithstanding the luxury life they live, people in the West are much more likely to succumb to fear, cynicism and frustration. How do we get a grip on things when nothing is really what it seems?
Are we to conclude that political parties have very little faith in the power of the ideas and values for which they profess to stand when they increasingly rely on
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marketing bureaus to churn out the slogans and statements they should employ to win over votes? The media, driven by negative bias, plays an increasingly misleading and destructive role, all too often blowing bad news out of proportion to meet their need for sensational headlines on the front page of their early morning edition. Furthermore, what if the company you work for is preoccupied with detecting so-called ‘guilty parties’? Will creativity, innovation, and performance survive in such a guilt-seeking atmosphere? Despite companies professing to be all about the future, they sadly all too often become bogged down in the past.
Beyonders know that the uppermost question in our minds should be: ‘what can we learn from this to create a better future?’
Are you the leader of whom co-workers without hesitation say: For this leader I want to work again?
Workers who respond positively are convinced that their leaders are committed to develop and use their unique talents for the better. Although they work hard, they experience their work as fun, meaningful and gratifying, the results visibly reflecting their enjoyment.
Do you experience fun, meaning, and gratification doing your work? Do your leaders create an environment in which you enjoy working or do they drive you towards the terrible experience of burnout? For Kay, the matter is clear. When, in the helter-skelter of our fast-paced modern way of life, we simply focus on the short term and on immediate gratification, it is inevitable that in the long term we lose sight of the essence of things; things that are really important.13 Finding a constructive balance between the short term and the long term, between ambition and meaningless, sterile growth. Does your organization really afford you the time and autonomy to attend to your priorities in a professional way, or are you transformed into a ‘big pretender’ by the burden of the rat race; by the stupidity of bureaucracy and the unpredictability of power?
We are all aware of colleagues who look as if they are paying attention during a strategic meeting, but in reality are steadily working their way through their e-mails, uttering vague generalizations when they are unexpectedly asked to respond. Should we condone their behaviour? Perhaps, even for them, everything is moving so quickly that it has become too intangible. Too quickly with technology evolving so fast that what we implement today is outdated tomorrow. Has their world become so intangible, with the structures needed to cope with a globalized world so complex, that they are unable to understand their position within these structures, and the impact of their actions?
Our testosterone-driven environment is a roller coaster ride with new loops being added again and again, launching us on a path of endless pursuit. Once immersed in this roller coaster ride, we are ultimately drawn into joining the ‘big pretender’ club. Should we keep playing this game simply because we do not
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know how to stop? Fortunately, there is good news: Beyonders know how to respond and are able to stop the rat race. Competition and cooperation, moving forward and standing still, requires leadership of exceptional quality. In short:
Beyondership!